Central Europe, the late Gothic

Unlike the Enghsh designers, who admired the proto-fan vault character which the profusion of ribs in chapter houses gives to the central conoid, the Сentral Europeans found various ways of emphasizing the autonomy of the constituent Y shapes or triradials, a formation used in the Rhineland from с. 1220 onwards. The most favoured way of doing this, the omission of radial ribs linking angles and

centre, is anticipated in the Villard plan.

The Prague vault is the first outside England to imitate the curious Wells trick of splitting foliage bosses to reveal rib junctions. An important aspect of the pattern applied to the surface of the tunnel appears to have been anticipated in Parler's own Old Town Tower on the Charles Bridge in Prague.

The vault here is a pointed tunnel without penetrations, each of whose curved planes is overland by a pattern of ribs almost identical in plan to those of the vault of the transpert porch at the cathedral, except that the bounding triangles are omitted so as to leave only triradials, a usage widespread in Central Europe by this date.

Like some early 14th-century German multistellar vaults, it can also be read partly as a series of large intersecting triradials straddling two bays.

The high vault of the cathedral choir is the first in Central Eurоре whose ribs consist entirely of intersecting triradials extending across the full width of each compartment. The concept was not altogether new, however, for there exists one south-western English example of its application dating from c. 1340, namely the series of small tunnel vaults inside the screen to the Lady Chapel at Ottery St Mary in Devon.

The penetrations of these vaults are on the longitudinal rather than the transverse axis, but if Parler really was aware of Ottery he could not have failed to note that the rib pattern of the screen vaults is excerpted from the vault of the Lady Chapel itself, where the arrangement of penetrations is as at Prague.

The Lady Chapel vault at Ottery also anticipates Prague's continuous patterning of lozenges at the vault crown, as well as the heavy longitudinal stress winch the patterning imparts to the basic tunnel.

In Central Europe the Prague choir vault came as a relevation and more or less immediately assumed the status of fountainhead of a tradition of large-scale vault design which was to flourish spectaculary throughout the next century the a hall.

The main elevations at Pngue are a version of the French Ravonnant formula whose strong lines function as a kind of showcase for the display of a series of brilliantly original decorative set pieces.

Of neccessity, the arcade storey had to be completed in general accordance with Matthew of Arras's design, although in the west bays, which are entirely Parler's work, the high vault responds are thickened.

Comparison of the upper storeys with those of Cologne, which Parler undoubtedly knew, shows that he was prepared to make some fairly radical departures from Rayomant precedent for the sake of ensuring that the elevations complemented the high tunnel - vault in emphasizing the unity of the choir as a longitudinal space. The main devices which promote this reading are the heavy horizontals of the triforium parapet and the strange angled projections of the clearstorey sills, which almost cut through the western high vault responds and which actually do sever most of the thin responds inherited from Matthew’s Bicades.

The partial cutting was no doubt the effect preferred by Parler, bvit the complete cutting inust have been acceptable to him both for itself and because Ins father had used something very similar in the ambulatory at Schwabisch Gmund. At Prague the angled sill projections register as being a subordinate part of an even stranger feature, the angled clearstorey liglits and trifonuni openings.

The pretext for tins angling was the positioning of the internal triforiuni passage and external clearstorey passage so liard up behind the high vault icsponds as to preclude a normal junction between the responds and the triloiium arcade and clearstorey tracery. (Both paiisages were blocked in the lyth century because they weie lield to endanger the structural stability ol the choir, and in the 20th centmy doors to a new walkway passing behind the buttresses were tormed in the adjacent parts of the triforium windows.)

The extra width of the tritonum arcade openings next to the vault responds allows a good view tioni giound level nof merely of the entrances to the tritonum passage but ol the celebrated sculptured busts which sin mount them.

Painted inscriptions formerly identified the busts as the family of Сharles IV, the successive archbishops and clerical building administrators, and the two architects of the choir.

The scheme as a whole is unique, although parallels for the use of figure sculpture above passage entiances arе in the choirs of Sees and St Augustine's, Bristol.

In fact, the upper choir elevations seem to be as much indebted to south-western English sources as the high vault, for the only antecedents of the angled lights of the clearstorey are the iimilarly fimaled entrance's to the Wells clearstorey passage, and the recessed spandrels above the сlearstorey openings are evidently based on those over the east window at Wells.

Above the angled lights at Prague there is nof solid masonn, as at Wells, but single glared lights winch serve to make the tracers heads unitonn in width and height with those in ilie nairow apse windows.

Possibly Parler knew the similar arrangement in the mid-13th-century Rayomant choir of Leon.

The actual tracery patterns used at Prague letlect the influence of English fleiwing designs merely in a general way, for they are the most original Continental tracery of the 14th century. The only clearly identifiable borrowings are from Swabian sources, notably the windows of с. 1330-47 in the nave at Schwabisch Gmund (the strange 'melting' of one form into anofhci in the inteinal in the external parapets) and the east window of с. 1335 at Bebenhausen Abbey the cusping of the large circle in the right-hand window in 168 which impinges on some of the forms it encloses).

There is some irony Parler's indebtedness to English Gothic, for King John of Bohemia died fighting on the French side at Greecy in 1346, and Edward 111 had lent his support to Сharles IV's main rival for the imperial crown, Louis of Bavaria.

Nevertheless, from the viewpoint of the architect rather than the patron it would have been quite natural to take cognizance of the achievements of the most creative tradition of 14th-century cathedral Gothic, especially as Prague was a one-of rather than die product of an established German tradition of great church architecture.

Awareness of English Gofhic in the Rhineland and Swabia went back to the late 13th century when the masons of Strasbourg Cathedral recorded their decision to adopt the craft organization of the English masons.

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